Bing pushes 270 terabyte update; maps have never been better

Today, Microsoft announced that Bing would be receiving a collection of new updates including nearly 270 terabytes of Bird’s Eye imagery, along with more venue maps and a new option to report problems.

Venue Maps have also received an update so users can easily navigate through malls, airports, parks, and more on Windows Phone or Windows 8 devices. As of now, Bing Venue Maps contains 4,700 locations in 59 countries. New locations with this update include the Singapore Zoo, King’s College, and the city of Las Vegas.

I have personally used Venue Maps while navigating the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island; the service has been a life saver for my sore legs after long treks trying to find a specific store.

Finally, Bing now incorporates an option to report an incorrect citation in their mapping service. Simply click on a point of interest and select the new “Report a problem” button.

Bing continues to improve every day and with Apple’s latest decision to rely solely on Bing for Siri’s web search content, the service is shooting forward.

Yep, I only use Google for porn searches since Bing is integrated with my Facebook... We don't want everyone knowing what we're searching for now do we kiddos??.. Nevertheless, sorry for using Google folks..

hmmm, interesting...Google maps never worked for me in India...Nokia maps on the other hand, have always been spot on, even has turn by turn directions...and Nokia's OFFLINE mapping, BEST THING ever! Can't tell you the number of times it's helped me when there was no signal at all

All nokia maps lacks is poi's.. But otherwise its as good if not better than google maps.. Iv used it a lot in India. The offline maps are the best thing. Poi's are not really an issue. U can easily get the street name

Win DroidPhone, I think you've not used Nokia (Here) Maps if you say it lacks POIs and call it inaccurate. I've been using both Nokia and Google Maps for several years, often comparing them together while driving around all over the country with my brother, and I have no doubts in my mind that Nokia maps is years ahead of Google in India. The level of details and POIs that Nokia has gathered in their almost two decade presence in India is unparalled. Google cannot even think of achieving that in many years. Google has just mapped the popular buildings well, that too in the bigger cities. Whereas Nokia has details going down to Kirana Stores and Medical Shops and Dhabas even in the smallest towns. Their Venue Maps are also amazing and cover most of the malls I've been in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, NCR, Lucknow etc. If you think otherwise, your knowledge is shallow or you're talking through your hat.

That was always an issue with Bing in the past, but Bing has improved dramatically in the past year and it's not an issue now. I work in IT and use Bing exclusively now and have had no issues with these technical searches.

Not really HERE maps are terrible where I live there's a huge line going straight down my city where it looks like 2 different seasons and are really blurry. But on my wp7 trophy with Bing maps looks fantastic

Such lines are inevitable as you cannot cover the whole Earth with aerial photography at the exact same time of day in each location. Google Maps has plenty of such lines as well. Both have one going through the city I live in (in different locations), though to Google's credit it looks a bit better on their maps (seems as though they're crossfading the images into each other, whereas it's a sharp line on Bing maps).

It's true. In the UK the satellite view of the maps are pretty useless for large parts of the country, with the odd area where it's actually OK and a clear line between them. If you go to the HERE website then it becomes clear what the problem is: in the places where it's bad, they only have large-scale images but no higher-resolution images for a tighter zoom. For example, look at Birmingham and around. Birmingham itself has good quality images at all zoom levels, but go outside of Birmingham and there is a line where zoomed in is just a useless blurry blow-up of the large-scale images used for zoomed out.

So, yes, for me WP7 was vastly superior for satellite image mapping. I find myself using the gMaps app for Google Maps far more on WP8 than I did on WP7. The irony is that, though gMaps, Google maps are easily accessible on WP7 and WP8, where as Bing maps are no longer available at all because they've been replaced with HERE maps. Nokia gave Microsoft data for Bing maps - it really should have gone both ways to really benefit Windows Phone users.

Bing Maps are available on Nokia WP8 devices.
There's an article on here somewhere with a link to an app. All WP8 handsets, apparently, have bing maps. There's is just no Button to get to them on Lumias. The app adds that button.

Not true, I'm afraid. Yes, the "Bing" core WP map app is still available on Nokia phones by installing an app that gives a shortcut to it. It also reveals itself when you use things like local scout. However, the "Bing" maps app on all WP8 phones (both Nokia and other manufactures, where the app link is still present) uses the Nokia HERE data, not the Bing data. The "Bing" maps app on WP8 shows exactly the same problems I describe as the HERE maps app.

The Bing maps website and the WP7 Bing map app, on the other hand, uses Microsoft's own data, which has had some of the Nokia data added into it.

yeah, I was trying figure this out, too. I have the 900, but doesn't matter.

The way I did it:
Goto Search/Bing. Type (or say) the name of your mall. Under "local" returns, you should be able to tap on it and it'll bring it up in maps, and bring you to the "about" menu. One of the choices should be "indoor map."
Took mine a bit of time to load the 1st time. And it seems to be automatically turning on "aerial view" when I zoom in close enough to read the store names (yet the mall building itself is in "map view" but surrounding parking/streets are aerial / photo view ... weird.)
In the upper L corner it should show "Level 1" if it's a multi-level mall. Tap that to change Levels, or to bring up a directory of the mall, where you can choose a store from categories; tap a store name and it will bring up the "about" menu for that store, from which you can map it within the mall.
Cool!

I have been using Bing maps (Desktop) exclusively for almost 2 years now ! Its more accurate than Google Maps here in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia & they frequently update the imagery .
Funny thing , I have been using WP since January & i never used Maps , like ever ... I don't know what the app look like to be honest lol .

Bing is terrible in developing countries, local news is outdated compared to google. I'd like to drop google but i can't at the moment. Dont know why ms has offices in almost these countries for years but dont do much to improve their online services. Even in japan, bing is no where in users' mind when they come to search or map. Hope it's changed soon.

Hard to believe they created Bing because they tried to buy Yahoo for 40B. So glad Yahoo foolishy declined. Bing has made amazing gains and eventually will become yet another billion dollar business for MS. I mean look at the gains every quarter and google has been stagant or lost share. It stands now Goog 67% Bing 17%. Bing is a bonafide threat now. And make no mistake google is a threat to both MS and Apple and the reason why Apple is using Bing. Less dependent on Goog. Perhaps next year they'll use Bing maps if they keep accelerating.

Hmm...bing search is decent...but functionality needs to improve on WP...and in places like India where functionality is limited compared to US and UK, both WP and Web search is a distant second compared to google...hope things change for the better soon...

Correct me if I am wrong, but Skype does not allow me to direct incoming calls to any number of choosing. Also, Skype does not translate voicemails into text and email me a copy of the voicemail. Or does it?

I personally love using Bing and I have been ever since they introducted it when replacing live.com. That being said though, I wish it was a little better on WP8. I really want my Bing Rewards to be earned whenever I use the search function on my Lumia 920, because I do a lot of searching on the go rather than on my laptop
Bing has come a long way and although I'm a typically a fan of Apple; I'm glad they're using Bing over Google. :)

I use Bing but it's not that good in Sweden...I hope this deal with iPhone will get MS's thumb out off their a** and give the rest of the world the USA features and support and bring Bing out of beta. :)

nice, here in germany, bing is nearly always better than Google. but WHEN will Nokia use this terrific satellite images in there Windows Phone HERE Maps app ? Their own images are so ugly. i once asked on twitter and the latest reply was stay tuned, there is something coming. but that was weeks ago...

I would like to use Bing, but I just don't get the results I need. Having read this news, I wanted to give it a try again.
I am going to Bruxelles in a few weeks, and I found an address that I want to check out when I am there.
Copying the address from a website into Bing - I get two sites as result.
Copying the address from a website into Google - I get a nice map and streetview of the place, and I get 5 useable sites.
Not getting any map result in my Bing search, I went to BIng maps and searched for the address there - It won't even find the address. I had to add the country to the search to get a result - and there is no streetview on it.
So while I would like it, if Microsoft had made a valid alternative to Google, its it not there for me yet.

Birds eye view is actual image taken by a super high resolution camera from an air plane at a 45 degree angle and gives a 3D perspective whereas satellite view is just an aerial view from space so its not very clear.

I love Bing's integration on my WP7 & WP8, but I still prefer Google for general searches as it tends to come up with far better results. I did also prefer Maps compared to HERE Maps as it was baked into the OS as opposed to being a separate app.

Bing = Here maps by Nokia. As for imagery: you all don't seem to realize just how expensive it is to get imagery. You also have proprietary restrictions on certain areas placed there by whomever purchased it first. Then there is the country restrictions on what imagery can be made available , ie: the UK. Finally, google uses a ton of open mapping sources. Nokia does not for quality reasons. While that might seem like a lack of coverage it is rather a business decision to protect their overall map quality which is far and above that of google

I use no Google services except for:
~ Chrome (I want to pick up IE 10, but Chrome makes it so difficult to port over cookies and other settings I don't feel like restoring!)
~ Gmail (Migrating to Outlook.com soon)
~ YouTube (Not much of a choice here...)

I really can't go without Google for Search , its just better in every language. and for image search forget it its unpararelled .
But i use outlook.com now , i use skydrive and i'm very happy that nokia allows results from Google in Lumias

Google maps are way ahead in SouthEast Europe too. Whan I search in Bing compared to Google I feal that somehow I'm not using it right. Results tend to be complitely irelevant. I use it only on WP8 though.

Is there a bing maps app for WP8 devices? I've downloaded a couple 'Maps' apps which claim they're the old Maps app but they don't have any updated maps and no birds eye. Being in Melbourne and having a look at their maps now my whole area has been updated with new images.